


Lovers She Never Had

by pauraque



Category: Spider-Man (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-09
Updated: 2004-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-27 09:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's falling apart and they're all pretending not to notice, but she knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lovers She Never Had

**Author's Note:**

> For Keladry, who provided the prompt (given in the summary).

Breakfast. Peter isn't there. The phone's been ringing, and it's probably Eddie calling from the theater, but she doesn't get up. She drags the spoon back and forth through her oatmeal, chin in her palm, watching the way the silver gleams in the thin morning light.

Sunday. Peter makes love to her, and he does everything right, and says everything right, and they curl up together just like a right couple should.

She falls asleep and dreams of fire and the filthy dead-fish river, dreams of a great machine that doesn't make sense and shouldn't be... Nowhere to go, nowhere safe to turn her eyes.

And she dreams of a hissing rattle in her ear, the pass of smooth metal over her cheek. Writhing arm strong like a snake around her waist, motor vibration deep down into her bones. A smell like old oil— dark eyes and a whisper, the clicks of articulation as it coils and tightens around her leg...

She jerks awake in the blind-dark, reaches out with open grasping hands. And — of course — Peter isn't there.

December. She goes biking in Central Park, in the darkening winter afternoon. Skyscrapers all blanketed with mist rolling like the sea, and she pushes herself harder than she ever has, hair whipped back and cold with sweat. She's eating up the ground and feeling the rattle of gears, of the machine beneath her. She crests the hill and stands up on the pedals, coasts down with the blue-twilight ponds laid out before her and the calls of the geese echoing on the wind.

She shuts her eyes, and the drop in her stomach is like being carried forty-five stories in the air, the burn in her lungs is like screaming, and gripping the icy metal of the handlebars is like hanging on for dear life.


End file.
